2018 Oakland Mayoral And City Council Candidate Questionnaire by Zennie62Media

This 20-question questionnaire was designed to give Oaklanders a chance to evaluate, at once, the plans and philosopies of all of the participants in the Oakland Mayoral Race and the Oakland City Council Race for District 2, District 4, and District 6.

I am running because I love Oakland deeply. I love our culture and legacy, our resistance and resilience, our grit and our grind. I am deeply concerned about the direction in which our City is headed and that all of things that make us the most amazing place in the world are being erased from the fabric of our Town. As the recent Equity Indicators Report demonstrates, Oakland is failing to provide all of our community members with equitable opportunities to live, work, and thrive in Oakland.

The disparity is most painfully evidenced by the fact that while there are 6,000 people who are sleeping in the streets every night, and this administration has repeatedly failed to take the actions at scale and with humanity to reduce that number. Oakland is supposed to be the most progressive city in the nation, but increasingly and consistently we are failing to live up to that brand.

I accepted the call of hundreds of Oaklanders to run for this seat because I deeply believe that it is not too late to change course, but will be soon if we do not act with a fierce urgency of now. Finally, in these times, it is critical we demonstrate what truly progressive governance looks like. Often in political struggle, as we go so does the nation. That is the most critical thing we can do fight back against Trump.

3. Have you held an elected position before? If so, please describe.

No

4. Have you ever served on a public board or commission? If so, please list assignments.

Housing and Homelessness: This is the largest crisis facing our community right now.
We need redirection of City resources to address our most impacted communities, allow
us to build low-low income, low-income and workforce housing. We also need to fully
fund the Housing plan approved by the City in 2015 which will prevent homelessness in
the first place.
Environment and Blight: Our air is toxic, our water is poisoned and our streets are
filthy. We need a plan and to generate revenue streams to have a healthy community
for all. Additionally, we need to prepare for the impending consequences of climate
change. We need to adequately staff our public works department so that we can
distribute services equitably across Oakland.
Workforce Development: Currently no city resources are directed toward workforce
development. If we are going to build and attract businesses that pay living wages – we
need to be able to train Oaklanders to take those jobs; this includes bringing more
workforce training centers into Oakland city limits.
Public Safety: Public safety must be about prevention – not just criminalization. We
need to invest in things like jobs, education and mental health – as well as expand
community safety models like the successful one in the Laurel District that pays
community members living wages to keep the streets safe. We need to get to the gun
before the bullet flies rather than to the mother as she is putting her child in the ground.
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment: Oakland sorely
lacks the resources it needs to adequately support our community members that are
dealing with these issues. It will be significantly cheaper to proactively address this
growing crisis than dealing with it on the back-end when community members are in
crisis or danger.

Pensions and Unfunded Liabilities: We cannot continue to kick this can down the
road. We must set aside monies in each budget cycle to pay down this debt and ensure
that city workers who have given so much to us can retire with the dignity they deserve.

7. There is a projected deficit for the City of Oakland through 2020. Residents want to close the budget gap via raising revenues. What would you do to raise more money for the City of Oakland?

We must grow the budget. Even if we redirected all of our monies toward the places that
our values tell us the money should go such as housing, social services, clean streets
and schools, there still would not be enough to go around to improve the quality of life
for all Oaklanders. We should support the upcoming legislation to reform Proposition 13
which will bring over $500 million into Alameda County annually; collectively identify the
businesses that we want in Oakland; and invest in the workforce development department to train Oaklanders for these jobs. We must also support an anti-speculation tax, a real estate transfer tax, and a Citywide Community Benefits Agreement with a Project Labor Agreement that would ensure developers pay their fair share to develop here. We need to audit all of our major city expenditures, including the Oakland Police Department which receives 43% of our general fund, annually.

8. How do you propose to solve the problem of the City of Oakland’s under-funded pension liability?

It must be addressed in the upcoming budget. Kicking the can down the road only serves to further damage our ability to solve this problem, so we must do it now. One place to possibly find the funds to close the gap is OPD’s unauthorized overtime expenditures. As they spend $30 million without authorization every year, it appears to us to be necessary to audit OPD and determine whether the unauthorized expenditures can be translated into cost-savings that allow us to use that money to fund Oakland’s pensions.

Oakland Police-Related Questions

9. Does Oakland need to hire more police officers or reduce the number we have – please explain your answer.

I believe that Oakland first needs a comprehensive audit of its police department to determine how many officers are actually necessary, where the $473 million they receive goes, and what the City of Oakland is getting for it. Too often I observe 4-6 officers standing watch as DPW evict an unhoused encampment, costing the city thousands of dollars in employment hours and benefits.

Why do we need that many officers on the scene? Could Oakland’s resources be put to
better use? For too long, Oakland has accepted that more cops equals less crime – but
the statistics do not – and never have – backed up that assertion. I want to get to the gun
before the bullet flies rather than to the mother as she puts her child in the ground. To
do that, we need to invest in prevention and not just criminalization. This includes
mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment, workforce development,
social services and partnering with OUSD.

We also need to stop having police be the answer to every social ill. If something does
not require a badge and a gun, we should not send a badge and a gun. For non-violent community public safety concerns, we should replicate successful models like in the
Laurel Business District where community members are trained in mental health,
de-escalation, medical and restorative justice. This frees up law enforcement to focus
on more pressing community concerns and reduces unnecessary engagement with
impacted communities and police.

10. Do you support the work of the current Oakland Police Chief, or is a change needed? Please explain.

The current police Chief has taken some steps that are clearly improper – such as sending OPD to assist ICE in raiding a West Oakland family and taking away a young man for deportation proceedings who committed no crime. That action was wrong, and also unlawful, since the Oakland City Council had already passed a Resolution to “cut ties between OPD and ICE.” In addition, the Chief has given promotions to multiple senior level OPD officials who had been found to have colluded in the cover-up of major incidents of sexual misconduct against a minor. This flies in the face of the stated NSA requirement that is supposed to strengthen standards for promotional consideration. In fact, the Chief not only gave promotions, but even moved the promotion ceremony to a private location to hide it from the public. Thus, there is valid reason to seriously question the judgement of the current Chief.

It would, however, only be fair to note, that it appears that much of what the Chief did
wrong, was done under the authority of the current Mayor. For example, in the public
OPD report to Council on the ICE raid, the Chief reported that the Mayor and City
Administrator had been consulted prior to OPD agreeing to participate. And, it turned
out, that the fraudulent information from ICE, wrongly claiming that the West Oakland
family was engaged in crime, when they were not, had not been distributed originally by
OPD, but rather, had been given to OPD by the Mayor. The Mayor also supported the promotions of the senior brass involved in the sexual misconduct cover-up, and it was the Mayor herself who stood before the TV cameras and publicly defended former Chief Whent and said he’d done nothing wrong (though she knew, and we later learned, that he was the central person engaged in the sexual misconduct cover-up).

11. Unreported “use-of-force” incidents are a major Oakland Police problem. How do you propose to solve it?

The Equity Indicator Report gave OPD a score of 1 out of a possible 100 on Use of Force. Additionally, despite the Mayor’s repeated claims that Use of Force has gone down, the current administration recently got in trouble with the Federal oversight due to failure to report many uses of force. For instance, in the recent failure to include all uses of force, one of the cases mishandled was of a resident who was grabbed by police and thrown to the ground and had his arm broken for “jay-walking.” That incident, along with the recent arrest of Naj Smith for Bicycling While Black and the fact that top police officials defended those actions, shows that they have not yet changed their attitudes about heavy-handed and aggressive policing against African Americans who are posing no public safety risk. I would work to stop the wasteful harassment of pedestrians and bicyclists, and direct that car vehicle stops should only be done for cause.

As Mayor, I will demand transparency and accountability while implementing a zero tolerance policy for excessive use of force or sexual misconduct, increase the autonomy and authority of the police commission and continue my work at the local and state level to pass legislation that chips away at the multi-pronged laws and contracts that prevent accountability. One example of this is a bill I co-sponsored the last legislative session. SB 1421 (Skinner), the “Right to Know” Bill, makes it easier to identify police officers who have patterns and practice of misconduct and hold them accountable.

I would review use of force reports and work with the department, the Chief and court
oversight to make sure that no incidents are left out. I would also work to change our
police recruiting, hiring, training, and oversight process to closely examine the records
of those wishing to make lateral moves into the OPD from other cities and to weed out
people with behavioral or ideological issues that are problematic for this profession.

12. The Oakland Police Department is in its 13th year of federal oversight. What’s
your plan to get OPD away from federal government watch?

The Oakland Police Department is actually in its 15th year of federal oversight, with
several of the 51 initially ordered tasks in non-compliance or under-compliance.
work with the Chief, the monitors and the community to focus on these issue areas first.

Failure to comply should also impact contract negotiations as a means of accountability.
We need leadership that is not afraid to hold OPD accountable. They work for the
community and should be accountable to us.

13. The Oakland Police Department disproportionately stops more people of color, than whites. What’s your plan to stop this problem?

The first thing we need to do is direct OPD to do differently and then, in contrast to the
current mayor, be ready, willing, and able to hold the department accountable. Officers
should not be allowed to continue to do as they please. Stops should only happen with
cause – and we need to demand that is the case. Furthermore, we need to implement
additional measures for protecting our community members, including directing OPD to
end the practice of asking Black and Brown community members if they are on
probation and parole.

Homelessness, Affordable Housing, Quality of Life In Oakland

14. What’s your plan to stop or curb homelessness in Oakland?

I absolutely and unequivocally believe that housing is a human right, and will do
everything in my power as Mayor to ensure that right is realized by all Oakland
residents.

First, I will immediately get those who are sleeping on the streets, off the streets. We
have declared that we are in a state of emergency and we need to start acting like it.
This means making use of every single alternative housing model available to us, and at
the same time ensuring that these models are dignified, safe, and bolstered with social
services. In the short term, we can open up city-owned buildings, partition them and add
bathrooms and showers. We can work with OUSD to utilize abandoned schools. We
can use public land for public good and build low-low income, low-income and
workforce housing. While we work to provide transitional housing, we need to be
attracting developers of low-income and affordable housing to the City to create
long-term housing solutions. Tiny homes are not forever homes, and with over 6,000
Oakland residents living in our streets, we need to be using all available resources to
create and sustain low-income and affordable housing.

We also need to prevent homelessness in the first place, which is why a central issue of
my campaign has been Yes on Proposition 10. 80% of the current homeless population in Oakland are formerly housed residents of Alameda County. The rent is just too high. Once Proposition 10 passes, I will work with council to pass the most progressive rent control policy in the state. Additionally, we need to close landlord loopholes and pass a resolution similar to Measure F in San Francisco that provides city-paid-for attorneys to every single community member facing eviction.

15. What’s your plan to cause more affordable housing to be built in Oakland?

We will seek to partner at the local, county, and state level to encourage the creation of
new streams of funding for affordable housing production. In addition, we will champion
the enforcement/collection of impact fees, including a reexamination of our current fee
schedule. For example, we currently charge an average of $20,000 per unit in fees in
comparison to Fremont which charges an average of $80,000. This suggests that we
could raise fees significantly. Further, we will ensure that future development comes
with community benefit agreements that are directly linked to the production of
low-income and affordable housing. It is well past time for developers to be paying their
fair share to build in Oakland, and this is one of the primary tools that municipalities like
Oakland use to ensure that their projects benefit the people. Additionally, we would
explore revenue-generating projects for public land that is not suitable for affordable
housing. There are plenty of innovative models where cities have used public lands to
generate income, and Oakland is well situated to explore and take advantage of those
innovations to generate income to subsidize our housing needs. Finally, we will take
action to make sure available funds for affordable housing, including Measure KK, are
distributed in a timely fashion. Finally, I am a strong supporter of land-trusts programs
which have the ability to convert thousands of units into permanently affordable
housing.

16. What’s your plan to stop or curb illegal dumping in Oakland?

Oakland has been facing rising levels of trash on our streets and illegal dumping, especially in our lower-income and predominantly Black neighborhoods. Subjecting our communities to this trash and blight is not only unjust and a threat to public health, it is also displays serious inequities in Oakland public services. Instead of the current Administration’s “wait for complaints” approach, I will instead utilize a proactive strategy with assigned crews for geographic areas and hot spots. A complaint based system takes too long; leaving trash on the streets which is bad for our residents, and tends to attract more dumping, because when people see trash on the streets they think it is okay to dump more. In addition, a complaint-based system rewards the most privileged communities, focusing service on neighborhoods where
residents are better able to make connections leaving less-resourced neighborhoods to
fend for themselves.

I will also strengthen enforcement against illegal dumpers, making sure that we shut down those repeat offenders who are dumping for profit, such as individuals and hauling companies that to haul trash to the dump, but instead dump it on the streets and pocket the dump fees. I will work to improve and advertise the free annual bulky trash pickup service that is promised in our waste contract.This is especially hard for tenants, who may not know they are entitled to a bulky trash pickup, or may be unable to get it because they have to go through their landlord. Further, I will work together with community health organizations and others to launch a program to get needles off our streets, which pose both a blight problem and a public health threat. I will also continue to expand on partnerships with the County, and new and growing State-funded programs such as the Mattress Recycling Council, to address specific problems.

Economic Development In Oakland

17. Share with us your economic development plan and policy for Oakland.

CREATE AN ECONOMY THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE

Too many people are working multiple jobs to just barely make it through the end of the month. Oaklanders need good paying jobs close to home, and this means recruiting progressive companies that hire locally and pay living wages. Oakland also needs to work with other cities to create a Public Bank that will help us invest in Oakland.

• Recruit Progressive Companies that hire locally and pay living wages.
○ Oakland is a vital, progressive city, and our businesses should reflect that.
And this means Oakland is the perfect city to be the hub for the growing B
Corporations movement. “A B Corp Certification is the only certification
that measures a company’s entire social and environmental performance.
The B Impact Assessment evaluates how a company’s operations and
business model impact their workers, community, environment, and
customers.”
○ b. Oakland can move ahead of other cities as a preferred location for B
Corporations and other startup Internet businesses by installing our own
broadband network and establishing a municipal Internet Service Provider.
This will simultaneously improve service and reduce costs.

● Join with other cities to create “A Public Bank for Oakland”
○ The City of Oakland has partnered with Alameda and Berkeley to explore the possibility of creating a public bank, and it is time that Oakland had a Mayor to champion this project.
○ With the potential to have a new Governor who has championed a State Bank, now is the time for us to step forward and establish a Public Bank.
That way, we can ensure that our money supports Oakland and Oakland businesses, and is not taken out of our city or state by the Big Banks.
○ A Public Bank will mean more resources for job training programs, infrastructure investments, (including affordable housing and street repair) as well as capital for local, small businesses that are woefully under capitalized.

● Support Small Businesses and Ensure Equity
○ The City needs to increase the gross receipts tax for big business in order to provide more support for small businesses that are a vital part of our city and economy. Small businesses need one-stop shops for all permitting and zones that limit big chain stores from displacing our small mom-and-pop stores.
○ We need to partner with our local Community Colleges such as Laney College, to create technical assistance for small businesses, particularly in East Oakland where we need to ensure economic development without displacement.

18. What industry should Oakland focus on developing, and why?

Oakland should work to protect and strengthen the businesses and industries we have,
as well as expanding into new areas. Some areas with particular promise for Oakland
include: trade and logistics; shipping-related work, especially in and around the Port of
Oakland; and medical services, including research and treatments. Further, the new A’s
ballpark with shops, restaurants and hotels is a financial opportunity for Oakland, as
well.

We have a very large retail gap, in which we lose millions of dollars in tax revenue
as Oaklanders shop for major purchases like furniture, clothing and appliances in other
cities, so targeted retail attraction can help fill this gap with B Corporations committed to
paying living wages, allowing unionization, and protecting our environment. These
larger retail attractions should not be in neighborhoods where they will add to
displacement but rather should be situated downtown, as part of the new A’s Space or
along the Hegenberger Corridor as proposed by Candidate Marchon Tatmon. Oakland
can continue to invest in areas in which we already have some strength and where
there is opportunity for growth, including food production, cannabis edibles production,
bio-medical, research and education.

The Coliseum and The Sports Industry in Oakland. (A special section because Oakland has a multi-billion-dollar facility called The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Complex.)

19. Where should the Oakland A’s new ballpark be: Coliseum or Howard Terminal?

My preference would be for the new A’s ballpark to be at the Coliseum, where we already have a BART station, freeway access, hundreds of acres of publicly-owned land, and enough space with the needed environmental clearances to build not only a new ballpark, but also shops, restaurants and hotels which would create significant local jobs and revenue as well as create a welcoming atmosphere for fans. The site should also include low-income, workforce and affordable housing.

However, I am not closing off the possibility of Howard Terminal, if it were done with the
right steps. Important for me, regardless of which location, is that we ensure that the
project is done in a way that benefits, and does not harm, the community. I would work
to secure agreements for quality local jobs at living wages, and local business
opportunities in the project. In addition, it is essential that the community be heard and
included in the planning and development process. If a site that does not already have
good transit is chosen, then improving transportation access will need to be part of the
project.

20. What should the future of the Oakland Coliseum be, and do you have a plan to share with Oaklanders?

Whether the A’s choose to stay at the Coliseum or not, the site should be revamped to fill our greatest housing need. The land should be used to provide majority low-income, workforce, and affordable housing. In addition, that site could be a resource for living wage jobs for Oaklanders and offering businesses such as restaurants and retail enhance quality of life for residents. Additionally, we consider extending invitaitons to soccer and/or WNBA teams that could make good use of the Coliseum.